Maureen Dowd

Published 3:16 pm, Saturday, April 5, 2014

I hadn't had it in years, and there were so many TV series I'd never seen — "The Wire," "Breaking Bad," "House of Cards," "True Detective" — that required an extended convalescence.

When I finally succumbed to a fever and crumpled in bed a couple of weeks ago with saltines and Gatorade, I grabbed the clicker, murmuring, "Alright, alright, alright." The only celebrated series I had no interest in was "Game of Thrones."

I'm not really a Middle-earth sort of girl.

I'd read about George R.R. Martin, the author of "A Song of Ice and Fire," the fantasy epic about a medieval-style land of Seven Kingdoms and beyond that is the basis of the HBO show. The bearded, portly 65-year-old, raised in Bayonne, N.J., and living in a modest house in Santa Fe, N.M., has been dubbed "the American Tolkien" by Time.

I had no interest in the murky male world of orcs, elves, hobbits, goblins and warrior dwarves. If I was going to watch a period drama, I usually favored ones with strong women in intriguing situations, like "Mad Men," "The Americans" and "Masters of Sex."

How could I fathom the agendas and plotlines of all the plotting lords and ladies and whores and bastards and sellswords of Westeros when even Martin himself has had to sometimes check with one of his superfans to make sure he's keeping the feuding factions straight?

A 2011 New Yorker profile described the nutty passion of Martin's fans, how they mercilessly mock him on Web forums for not writing faster, and how they keep track of every word to the point where the author has become paranoid about mistakes, such as when a character's eyes shift from green to blue.

"My fans point them out to me," he told the magazine. "I have a horse that changes sex between books. He was a mare in one book and a stallion in the next, or something like that." He added, "People are analyzing every goddamn line in these books, and if I make a mistake they're going to nail me on it."

But after I finished tromping around the bayou with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, I decided to watch one "Game of Thrones" to see what the fuss was about. It is not only the most pirated show on the Internet, but one of President Barack Obama's favorites — although he hasn't picked up any good tips about ruthlessly wielding power, either from "Game" or from Maggie Smith's Countess of Grantham on "Downton Abbey," another show he raves about.

After a marathon of three seasons of "Game" and the beginning of the fourth, starting this Sunday, I'm ready to forgo reality for fantasy.

Who wants to cover Chris Christie's petty little revenge schemes in New Jersey once you've seen the gory revenge grandeur of the Red Wedding?

Who wants to see W.'s portraits of leaders once you're used to King Joffrey putting leaders' heads on stakes?

Who wants to hear Hillary Clinton complain about a media double standard for women once you've gotten accustomed to the win-don't-whine philosophy of Cersei, Daenerys, Melisandre, Margaery, Ygritte, Brienne and Arya? As it turns out, the show not only has its share of strong women, but plenty of lethal ones as well.

It all seems so tame and meaningless in Washington after Westeros. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul wouldn't survive a fortnight in King's Landing. Charles Dance's icy Tywin Lannister, ruling over a kingdom more interested in dismemberment than disgruntled members, would have the Rains of Castamere playing as soon as he saw those pretenders to the throne. As for House Republicans, or should that be the House of Republicans, life would be mercifully short.

I fell hopelessly in love with Peter Dinklage's sexy dwarf, who is a schemer but a noble one by Lannister standards.

When friends would ask me what they could get me in the way of sustenance while I was sick, I would yell: "BRING ME MY DRAGONS!"

I even toyed with the idea of getting the flying, fire-breathing dragon on the cover of the new Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. The description is irresistible: "This is the remote controlled jet-powered dragon that soars through the air at up to 70 mph and belches propane-powered flame when on the ground. Proving its prowess before takeoffs or after successful raids, the dragon's LED eyes can be commanded to glow red while it emits a fiery 3-foot blast of flame from a cleverly concealed propane tank and igniter built into its toothy maw. A miniature turbine engine built into the beast's chest provides thrust that exits the rear at 500 mph, and uses 1/2 gallon of jet aircraft fuel or kerosene for 10 minute flights. With a head that swivels in the direction of turns, the dragon can climb and dive via wing ailerons and elevators built into its V-tail rudder."

Of course, no one who knows me thinks I should be in possession of propane gas. And the other impediment to joy, and bar to being the khaleesi and mother of dragons, was the price tag: $60,000. As Daniel Mendelsohn pointed out in The New York Review of Books, "People often talk about Tolkien as Martin's model, but the deep, Christianizing sentimentality of the worldview expressed in 'Lord of the Rings' is foreign to Martin, who has, if anything, a tart Thucycididean appreciation for the way in which political corruption can breed narrative corruption, too."

Martin's larger Hundred Years' War theme echoes Shakespeare. As he has pointed out, "Believe me, the Starks and the Lannisters have nothing on the Capets and Plantagenets." And as Mendelsohn writes, it is "the way in which the appetite for, and the use and abuse of, power fragments societies and individuals; in a world ruled by might, who is 'right'?"

When a flattering adviser warns Cersei, the queen regent, that "knowledge is power," she makes a feint to cut the man's throat and then informs him, "Power is power."

In the new season, Tywin Lannister explains to his grandson what makes a bad king: spending all your time whoring, hunting and drinking; being so gullible you don't recognize the evil around you; being so pious you fast yourself into an early grave; and assuming that winning and ruling are the same thing.

"A wise king knows what he knows and what he doesn't," Tywin explains to the boy. "You're young. A wise young king listens to his councilors and heeds their advice until he comes of age. The wisest of kings continue to listen to them long afterwards."